Interviews with Soma Varga
Designer profileDesign Interview
7 May 2021 · Orca eVTOL Emergency Medical Aircraft
We looked on the current emergency medical market and shockingly found two problems that are continuously overlooked. First, due to the globalization, the average response time of emergency medical services increased by nearly 40% in the past 20 years. On the other hand, using outdated gas turbine technology in these missions, an increasingly higher and higher operational cost results for the rotorcraft operators. There is a clear need from both the patient's side for a faster rescue, and both on the operational side for a more profitable mission profile. That is where the Orca eVTOL offers significant progress. With the electric propulsion and fixed-wing aircraft like cruise flight, it is able to reduce response time by several minutes, while due to the lower system complexity and electricity as propellant, a remarkable operational cost reduction is achievable.
We wanted to merge functionality with aesthetics. In general aerodynamics result in appealing shapes and forms, but the focus was always on maximized system performance. It was crucial to optimize the external geometry and to design the components for the lowest allowable structural weight, all required to offer high take-off and cruise speed.
Already during the A 'Design Competition we set out to establish a strong founding team behind the project. The ultimate goal has always been to reach the actual flight with the fully functioning prototype. We currently work on the subscale version of the Orca that is a remotely piloted vehicle used as a proof of concept. We strive to have the full scale prototype aircraft type certified and ready to enter into service by the end of 2026.
The research and engineering behind the project that resulted in this specific aircraft required approximately 6 months. Of course, this was only the conceptual design phase that has to be complemented by the design and selection of all the built-in subsystems.
The initiating idea behind the project was the renowned international aircraft design competition by the British Royal Aeronautical Society in 2020. We found the initially posted requirements for and emergency medical aircraft with vertical take-off and landing capability accompanied by an entirely battery fed electric propulsions system to be a feasible concept. Of course this could be only thought as feasibly with the current achievements in the battery and electric motor technologies. These kinds of aircraft went from a typical science fiction element into an executable and even profitable group of aerial vehicles.
We intend to design and manufacture the aircraft. The Orca Aerospace was especially set up with this particular mission in mind.
We are convinced that electrification will bring the 4th revolution in the aerospace industry. Exploiting the benefits of distributed electric propulsion, aircraft architectures never imagined before became possible.
In the aviation industry, the Urban Air Mobility movement resulted in a powerful amount of studies how the aircraft of the future might look like. Of course, all these were only guidelines and we had to take a look on today's rotorcraft world as well. We especially restricted the Orca's external geometry to remain in the ballpark of the Eurocopter EC-135's in order to leverage all the currently existing heliports. On the other hand, Burt Rutan's works gave quite a bit of inspiration. His way of merging aerospace technology into extraordinary shapes was and will always be epic!
They are all the emergency medical operators around the globe. Not only the air ambulance, but the ground based services could exploit the benefits of operating with the Orca. In case of the ground based emergence medical services, we are able to cover the same dispatch area but with lower number of station and personnel, whereas in case of the helicopter emergency services we complement their mission with a profitable solution for lower flight ranges.
We designed the aircraft keeping safety at the highest priority. On the other hand we used our experience from the aviation industry to design a new generation of aircraft that is revolutionary enough, but still traditional to be able to have it certified. Certification in an aircraft's life decides if it is going to be a profitable project or a doomed one. Compared to our competitors we offer an aircraft architecture that has redundant safety features, this is not only appealing for the operators but eases the certification and reduces the development project cost.
The design proposal for the Royal Aeronautical Society's competition required not only a detailed design document, but a fully built up simulation file for the X-Plane aircraft simulator. When we implemented the very first texture on the geometry we used a black, white and red colour combination. The resulting look of the aircraft was quite similar to the killer whale's, the orca's appearance.
First of all a lot of textbook on aircraft desing of course. We modeled tha shape in the Solid Woks CAD tool and used KeyShot for the renderings.
We use the so-called three-surface aircraft layout that allows us to cope with sever shifts in the aircraft's center of gravity. This is especially important for aircraft using battery since in case of a thermal runaway it has to be possible to eject these burning batteries outside of the aircraft. In a traditional aircraft layout, this kind of sudden center of gravity shift would result in an uncontrollable aircraft, thus crashing.
All of us are engineers with years of industry experience. There are avionics, aircraft, vehicle and mechanical engineers in our team. We received valuable advices from the Hungarian Air Ambulance already during the conceptual design phase, and they continue to provide us with vital insight into the operation throughout the development process of the prototype.
It is the technology that allows the very specific mission the aircraft is designed for. Being able to take-off and land vertically and still fly horizontally at high speeds requires the complex interaction of the propulsion systems. Only through the advancements in battery technology, composite material science and electric motor efficiency is the concept of Orca eVTOL possible.
The concept is entirely based on aeronautical research. This contains selecting high performance laminar flow airfoils, efficient electric engines, high strength but low weight carbon fibre material and lithium based batteries with the highest available energy density. The biggest challenge was to work out a common set of engineering principles both from rotorcraft design and fixed wing aircraft design. Separately these areas of engineering are well documented, but the novel field of VTOL aircraft is still a new land.
The energy requirement of vertical take-off and landing is up to 8 times higher than of an efficient horizontal flight. Since the Orca uses electricity as propellant - a technology still in its first feasible years - required us to come up with engineering solutions to maximize the overall system energy efficiency to reach a minimum of 120km of range with a pilot, a passenger and a patient onboard of the aircraft.
We knew A'Design from the past and felt it is a great forum to show the Orca to the world and to gain attention to our project. Keeping it local was never an option for us.
Working in a team and coordinating such a work is never easy, that is the very first lesson we learned. On the other hand being able to step back and to have an unbiased opinion and being able reiterate the idea is vital to its survivability.
Designer Interview
8 May 2021
At Orca Aerospace each founding member has a different background in engineering sciences. We cover fields such as aerospace engineering, avionics, or vehicle engineering. The desire to create was always a strong motivating force for us, thus not only follow the technological trends but to create a forward-looking innovation.
Orca Aerospace was founded in 2020 in order to organizationally support the development of the Orca electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. Our headquarter is based in the mediterranean city of Pécs in Hungary.
Design is the combination of superior functionality and aesthetics.
We prefer designing aerial vehicles, let them be piloted or remotely piloted architectures. The essence of preliminary aircraft design is to combine different engineering solutions and available technologies into a complex system working together.
It is the British Supermarine Spitfire aircraft for subsonic flight and the F5E fighter aircraft for supersonic flight. The Spitfire was the first serial produced aircraft using elliptical wing layout to achieve the lowest possible induced drag during cruise flight, while the F5E was the first aircraft to use the so-called wasp-waist shape to reduce the drag increase while approaching transonic flight speeds.
For the Orca Aerospace, the Orca eVTOL is the first design. We work on this project for ourselves and not for external customer.
It is the carbon fibre composite because of it's high strength and low weight. Furthermore, it is possible to manufacture complex shapes with it that was not feasible with the duralumin.
With the right project to work on the motivation is continuous.
The main focus is always on the highest achievable performance. To reach this, we have to merge aerodynamics, structural design and subsystem integration.
Excitement when envisioning the final prototype during its first flight.
We will be inexpressibly proud.
For a new and novel aircraft it is finding the barrier between innovation and feasibility or manufacturability.
If it is clear that the design is feasible and the communicated performance measures are realizable.
To provide solutions for problems affecting a wide range of the population.
The future of design is in rapid prototyping and using virtual reality or augmented reality already during the preliminary stage.
It was in Nov.2020 at the General Aviation Conference of the British Royal Aeronautical Society.
We live in Hungary. We are affected more of the international design trends in the aeronautical society. We strive to be an internationally know company in order to reach the broadest possible audience. In Hungary the development costs are significantly lower compared to USA or Germany, but of course since lower number of companies are working here in the aerospace sector, finding suppliers can be more challenging.
First is always gathering engineering studies in the very specific topic we are working on. This is continued in the filtration of different concept and working towards a selected one that best suites the initially specified requirements for the aircraft and its mission. This selected base model is than worked out in detail and is iterated several times. The preliminary design concept is closed with going back and checking if all the requirements are fulfilled perfectly. The next steps can be subscale model manufacturing, simulation file build up, but is always having the concept virtually modelled.
There should never be an end to studying and broadening the knowledge of the filed they are working in.
professional knowledge, creativity, technical skills, perseverance, sense of beauty
Wide variety of aircraft design textbook, from the general rules to the very specific topics as well. We use the classical spreadsheet for calculation and CAD software for visualisation.
The conceptual phase of an aircraft design takes up to a few weeks if the background knowledge is already available. The next stage of conceptual design will be up to a few months while the detailed design is measured in years.
Flight testing of a light sport aircraft and following through the process of aircraft development from design to manufacturing.
Currently we work for ourselves.
Preliminary design of aircraft. We especially enjoy discovering new technical solutions and merging them in a functioning and well performing system.
With our team, we plan to make the Orca eVTOL a reality and build the fully functioning prototype. We plan to have the aircraft ready to enter into service by 2026.
We prefer working in a team.
soma.varga@orca-evtol.com or zsolt.koltai@orca-evtol.com
No additional information.